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LDF President Ted Shaw Joins Columbia Law Faculty

March 4, 2008 (NEW YORK) – Theodore M. Shaw, director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), has joined the faculty of Columbia Law School. He will be a professor of professional practice, teaching classes in civil procedure and constitutional law.

“Since his graduation in 1979, Ted Shaw has carried on a great Columbia Law School tradition of leadership in civil rights advocacy. We welcome him to the faculty where his broad experience and his creativity and insight as an advocate and scholar will add depth to our public law programs,” said David M. Schizer, Dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law.

At LDF, Shaw was involved in numerous landmark cases, including as lead counsel in a coalition that represented African-American and Latino students in the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions case. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court heard Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, that challenged the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School.

Shaw worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. from 1979–1982, litigating civil rights cases throughout the country at the trial and appellate levels and at the U.S. Supreme Court. Shaw currently serves on the Legal Advisory Network of the European Roma Rights Council, based in Budapest, Hungary.

Shaw graduated from Columbia Law School in 1979. He had graduated from Wesleyan University with honors. Among his honors and awards are the Lawrence A.Wein Prize for Social Justice given by Columbia Law School, the National Bar Association Young Lawyers Division’s A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. Memorial Award. He has served on both Columbia Law’s Board of Visitors and the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees. He has previously taught at the University of Michigan Law School, Temple Law School, CUNY School of Law, and as a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School.

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, and criminal law.